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Roxanne was an example of the resourcefulness of the people and a blantant display of the anti-Cozumel attitude of Mexican City. One week after the storm the island was fully functional. Two cruiseships came into port 48 hours after the storm passed and might be the only time the ships benefited the pueblo in general.Mexico City and Chetumal worked overtime to damage Cozumel and provided next to nothing in aid. The island picked themselves up, repaired and returned to business as usual in amazing speed. Thanks to the workers of CFE and Telmex, workers came in from Cancun and Merida and worked literally day and night restoring phone and electricity. I remember lineman working at 2:00am holding flashlights in their mouths.
All phone lines were down and it was difficult to get accurate information out. European press reported that all the houses were blown down and they were digging mass graves to bury the dead (no deaths, one broken arm from the storm). Mexico City reported that the island was largely destroyed, put out notice to travel agencies to not send anyone to Cozumel and did not lift the warning for three months. Travel agents were told to send their clients to Cancun which had been spared.
This was before the glitzy new construction and the downtown area lost signs and awnings, but was built so securely that almost no damage was done, minor flooding, no broken windows. What spared the vegetation, perhaps why it was not so noticed by Rechard a week later, was the massive rainfall prior to the storm. Opal, a tropical storm the week before had dropped 21+ inches of rain and saturated the ground. Trees and shrubs were uprooted rather than snapped off. The park in Corpus Cristi was flattened and people simply "righted" the trees and staked them and within a month were near completely recovered. This period was a rainy time and approximately 55+ inches of rain fell in a 22 day period.
The storm sprang up overnight and there was little time to prepare. It began with a near stationary tropical depression off Honduras which turned into a cat 3 (?) and was on top of Cozumel in 24 hours. The mayor of Cancun was on the radio at midnight before, trying to calm the people...."it is merely a depression, it is not moving, it is four days away, it may not even form a hurricane, there is no reason for this panic buying". The mayor of Cozumel, 12 hours later was on the radio screaming "alarma! alarma!, it's going to hit". Hurricane force winds hit around 2:00pm and lasted till after midnight. Right before the eye was to hit the storm turned toward Tulum and basically Cozumel remained in the eyewall as the storm slowly rotated. A more direct hit and the passage of the eye would have been a blessing and shortened the real bad time.
The neighborhoods were trashed with utility poles and lines everywhere. The Mayan "huts" were quickly blown away in early afternoon (they were rebuilt in less than a week by picking up windblown lumber and laminas), but whatever houses weren't blown away were largely undamaged. Power was turned back on the following night (explosions of transformers and electrical shorts everywhere) and the following morning people were picking up live wires in the street and reconnecting them. It took two days for the off island crews from CFE and Telmex to arrive and more permanently restore the lines. The community shared food, supplies, shelter, unblocked the streets and quickly returned to normal.
You'll never find a more resourceful people with the abilty to cope with adversity. The economy of Cozumel suffered far more from the damage resulting from the false information put out by Mexico City and Chetumal than in damages from the storm. Thankfully those people are out of power, Felix and Bello are in Chetumal and even the Palacio is back in Cozumel hands with Gustavo.
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